


purple summer

by Babydoll Ria (Babydoll_Ria)



Series: Ficmas 2014 [6]
Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Historical, F/F, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-01
Updated: 2015-01-01
Packaged: 2018-03-04 19:14:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3084665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Babydoll_Ria/pseuds/Babydoll%20Ria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The boy who lived, the boy who left.</p><p>It's all the same thing really.</p>
            </blockquote>





	purple summer

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Trovia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trovia/gifts).



He first sees her when he is a child, too young to remember her clearly and he’s long since forgotten her pale purple cotton dress, or the way her curls were long and thick, with a pretty purple bow in her dark hair.

He remembers her eyes, wide and green like his marbles, as she gasped in amazement when the traveling circus he travelled with came to the town square, in a small town by the sea.  He was training to be an acrobat, tall and thin for his seven years, he grins and performs flips on high ropes.

Each time he pretends to wobble, the crowd gasps and he smirks.

When the circus to begins to pack up, she approaches him, wide eyes and a small heart-shaped face.

‘Hallo,’ he says grinning. He’s the only child in the circus, so he’s used to making friends with the local children.

‘Is it fun?’ she asks, her voice high and childish, she hasn’t yet broken six, and she doesn’t think of the danger of the high ropes, only the adventure.

‘Course it is,’ he leans closer, dropping his voice in a controversial whisper, causing her to move closer. ‘It’s almost like flying.’

‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Oh. Can you take me?’

He grins like the Pied Piper, all teeth in a boyish grin and he offers her his hand; she doesn’t hesitate taking his larger tanner hand and following him through the adults packing.

There’s still a log propped up with a wire tightly strung to another pole about ten feet away, metal “U”s  are hammed in, worn and wearily every twelve or so inches, making a rickety latter.

He starts climbing and she follows him without wavering, and when he gets to about seven feet, he swings around the log.

‘Keep on climbing,’ he encourages, ‘I’m right behind you.’

She nods, not looking down and he applauds her for her nerves, until he grimaces when she steps on his fingers.

They are ten feet up, when there’s a shrilling, cackling cry that makes them both freeze.

‘Finnick Odair,’ Mags, the fortune teller and the oldest in the circus thunders. ‘Get down here now.’

The girl above him looks at him curiously, she’s five feet from the top and she is caught in the motion.

‘Do I keep climbing?’ she asks.

He shakes his head, ‘No.’

They begin going down, pausing every now and then because she gets nervous and slips a few times. He’s never had that happen before, someone having trouble climbing down; usually they can’t stomach going up.

When it’s about three feet, he jumps and turns his back to Mags, a tall intimating woman in sweeping yards of satin and clanging bracelets.  He holds his arms out, an open invitation to the small girl still clutching the metal prongs a few fight higher.

‘I’ve got you,’ he tells her. She smiles prettily, with one tooth missing and lets go of the log easily. She tumbles into his arms, her chest hitting his body, making him stumble backwards trying to regain his balance. She’s sturdier than he expected.

When he lets her go, they both turn to face Mags.

He gets a sharp rap on his head and by the squeak from his shoulders, so does she.

‘What were you thinking? You can’t let someone who has never-‘

‘It was me,’ the girl says, interrupting Mags, her chin up and her shoulders strong even though he can see she’s afraid. ‘I just wanted to fly.’

‘Still Finnick knows better-‘

‘It’s my fault,’ she insists, her small hands balled into fists. ‘Don’t punish him please. It’s my fault.’

Mags sighs, ‘Where is your mother?’

The girl looks through the crowds of people, the circus performers packing up, and the townsmen milling around, on their way back to work and their routine.  

‘Over there,’ she points to a slender, dark haired woman in a pale blue dress talking to some other women.

‘You best go to her.’

‘You won’t punish him will you?’ she asks, anxiously. Mags sighs and clucks her tongue. It’s not a promise, but it reassures her enough.

She turns to him and hugs him gingerly and clumsily. ‘Thank you,’ she tells him, ‘for trying to let my fly.’

He gives her a grin. ‘Next time, we really fly.’

‘Promise?’ she asks, holding out a finger.

He shakes his head, ‘We don’t make promises on fingers. Got no security. You gotta give me something important.’

She nods understandingly, and there’s a pause, before she unties her purple ribbon. She hesitates before giving it to him.

‘Do I get something back?’

‘Course,’ he digs around in his pant pocket, there’s a bit of loose twine from some rope tricks from before. He offers it to her.

She trades the satin ribbon for rough twine with a small smile.

‘Next time, you’ll take me flying,’ she says seriously.

‘A promise is a promise.’

They smile at each other, while Mags, frowning watches.

She turns to go back to her mother, who has noticed she is missing. He watches her run, dark curls no longer held back, and her cotton dress smudged with dirt and grease for the log.

‘Hey!’ he calls. ‘Hey, what’s your name?’

She turns, almost tripping on some boxes.

 ‘Annie.’

Later, when he’s in the back of the wagon, curled up nursing a sore palm from Mag’s ruler he wraps the purple ribbon around his wrist.

‘Annie,’ he tries, twisting the name on his tongue. ‘Annie.’

* * *

 

They don’t go back, they have the entirety of England to travel, and they won’t back to that coast for many years if all goes well.

It doesn’t though, there’s a war now, and the men in the circus leave then. He’s only fourteen-almost fifteen but Mags won’t let him enlist, instead they go back to Liverpool, where he was born.

In 1916, he lies and tells them he’s eighteen, not that it matters, and he’s taken several hours away by train to a training camp.

He promises to write Mags every day.

His Captain is named Haymitch Abernathy and the man is tall, but looks tired, as if someone is pressing a heavy weight on his shoulder trying to make the man shorter. He smokes, and the first thing he tells him is that he is too pretty.

‘Can’t change my face Captain,’ he smirks. ‘But my mother thanks you for that.’

Haymitch shakes his head, ‘Pretty ain’t good here Odair. I don’t need some girl crying on me because her sweetheart been cut up to look like my mug.’

He laughs, ‘Don’t have a sweetheart, so don’t think you’ll have to worry about that.’

His captain raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t say anything.

‘I got twenty,’ he grins, teeth like knives and Haymitch laughs tapping the ash from his cigarette.

‘Course you do, Odair.’

He’s grown into his looks, and he knows it-there are many pretty girls in Liverpool, and he can’t rig up poles to go flying on the high ropes again, so courting all the girls is the closest to reliving boredom he can get.

* * *

 

He’s given a tour of the hospital-Haymitch wants them to know the nurses who will be sewing them up, and it’s on the fifth floor next to the patients who have lost limbs that he meets her again.

Her dark long curls are in a neat plait pulled into a knot at the nape of her neck, with her white nurses cap sitting smartly on the top of her head, her green eyes look at him, then look past at the doctor hurrying down the hall away from them.

‘Excuse me,’ she says, and she pushes past him.

It’s their first meeting in eleven years, and it goes unnoticed by both of them.

‘That’s Annie Cresta,’ Haymitch says as they tour the beds; a blonde man missing half his left leg is being watched over carefully by a sullen dark haired girl who glares at them as the pass.  ‘Best stitches in all of England. It’d be an honour to have her stich you up.’

‘I knew an Annie once,’ he says mildly as they reach the end of the floor.

‘One of your sweethearts?’

‘No, she was just a little girl.’

* * *

 

Its two weeks later, when he’s getting his shots and she’s the nurse attending do they actually talk.

‘You broke your right hand?’ she asks, when he’s listing injuries. ‘How did you do that?’

‘Fell off a wire, I was eight.’ He’s only broken four bones in his career; it’s something he’s quite proud of.

‘Why were you on a wire?’ she looks up from her notepad, pretty loopy writing in medical jargon that he can’t quite understand.

‘I’m from the circus.’

‘I thought you said you were from Liverpool,’ she says one eyebrow raised.

‘Well, yes, but before that I was from the circus.’

‘I knew a boy from the circus once,’ she tells him, going to get the injections. ‘He promised he’d take me flying, and took my ribbon as collateral, and I’ve never seen him since.’

It’s this feeling of a sunrise inside of him, slowly heating him up as he looks at her better. He can’t remember what she looked like at almost six, but seventeen suits her like a lace glove. There’s a loveliness about her, and a secret in her green eyes.

‘I tried to take a girl flying once, but I got punished by a fortune teller for my effort.’

She smiles shyly, and he returns it with a confident smirk.

‘Hullo Finnick.’

‘Hallo Annie, still got my twine?’

* * *

 

He doesn’t court her-he’s at training, and she’s busy but they do talk when they have breaks over nothing in particular.

‘Will you write me?’ he asks one day stirring three sugar cubes into his coffee. ‘Or will your sweetheart get mad?’

‘I don’t have a sweetheart,’ she tells him, her coffee black the way she’s learnt to take it from a different captain than Haymitch; Brutus is a tall, brooding man who reminds him of the strongman at that traveling circus all those years ago. ‘And don’t you think you’ll get enough letters from those girls back home?’

‘I’m not writing back to them,’ he tells her. ‘I’m probably a dead man walking, no use for them to write to me. They ought to write to a fellow who’ll write back.’

‘You’re optimistic. The war will end soon, you know.’

He laughs; her words seem practised, like she repeats it daily to those she stitches up, making them think they’ll be home soon enough.

‘Will you write me though?’

‘I thought you were a dead man walking.’

‘Even corpses like a good letter.’

* * *

 

When he gets sent out it’s by train, and she’s there at the station. There’s a crowd of sweethearts saying goodbye from the nearby down, and she hovers near the platform. She’s in a pale purple dress and her curls are pulled back from her face, held there by twine that’s aged.

‘Seeing me off?’ he smirks, coming up behind her pulling her curls.

She shakes her head, ‘Protecting my investment.’

‘Oh?’

‘A boy promised he’d take me flying a long time. I intend to hold him to that.’

He smiles, it’s quiet and tentative, shy and filled with promises that he doesn’t know he’s making, because they are still so young.

‘I don’t think that boy’s going to let you down.’

She smiles at him, lit up from somewhere under the skin, and he gets goose bumps and a spark down his spine.

It’s a silent moment, one that belongs to an acrobat boy and a brave girl in between the steam of the train and the bustle of the people saying goodbye.

It’s lost in the steam, and he gets on the train, while she waits in the crowd.

The train turns on the tracks before either look away.

* * *

 

There is a lot more digging than he expected in war fare; back breaking trenches are dug several feet deep, which flood when it rains, turning the dirt and the sand to stabilize the walls into mud like cement that sticks to his clothes.

It’s not fun, not that he really thought it would be fun; but he would like to be back in Liverpool, taking girls dancing every Saturday night.  

At least that’s what he likes to think, because when the mud seeps into his boots, and he slams a brave rat with his curled fist, all he wants is coffee with too much sugar, sitting on the railing of a porch in the early morning hours because that’s when she gets a break, talking about nothing and everything.

‘Missing your sweethearts now aren’t you Odair?’ Haymitch asks, unscrewing his canteen that is filled with whiskey, not water.

He grins, grime does nothing to hide his looks. ‘Not really, they’ve all moved on.’

Haymitch scoffs but stops asking, because there’s nothing more to say.

His left wrist burns from the worn satin ribbon keeping his pulse hidden.

* * *

 

He gets letters, short and precise in loopy writing about weather, and poets, sometimes about picture shows. She never writes about the war, never talks about the soldiers she sees dies, but he can feel it in the way her words cram together and sometimes blot from her tears.

He wants to know why she is crying, and how he can make it better.

He’s fighting a war to make her stop crying but she feels so far away that he feels helpless.

He’s never felt helpless before.

‘Thought you said all your sweethearts moved on,’ Haymitch says one day watching him fold her letter into small quarters and tucking it in his breast pocket.

‘She’s not a sweetheart,’ he answers shortly. ‘She’s just a little girl.’

The way Haymitch looks at him makes him feel like the little boy getting scolded by Mags for trying to take a little girl who doesn’t know how to walk on the high wires up to the heavens.

‘Whatever you say kid.’

* * *

 

The train comes back, and she is waiting in the rain, with twine in her hair and no umbrella.

She watches the soldiers worn, tired, and broken irreplaceably in ways she cannot comprehend, for they  fought a war on the front lines and tried to hold the cracks together with suture and bandages, trying to keep everyone alive.

A man, tall and slight who looks like he’s imploding but standing still broken but unbreakable with captain’s stripes comes to stand in front of her.

She searches his face, lined and weary with horrors she will never know firsthand.

‘It was mustard gas,’ his captain says harshly with emotions. ‘He got caught in No Man’s Land.’

She nods slowly, and like a candle in the water she flicker and fights to keep spark. She’s a nurse in a war hospital, she has seen the effects of Mustard Gas, and knows those who fall in No Man’s Land never get  a proper burial with their family.

‘Thank you,’ she says, and like spun glass on the top of a book shelf, she’s perched precariously.

‘It was you,’ his captain says, ‘he asked for you. Said to tell you sorry.’

She breaks and shatters into a million pieces, and the captain can only watch.

 


End file.
